


All That Is Beautiful

by jedia_lo21



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8956474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedia_lo21/pseuds/jedia_lo21
Summary: Darth Sidious executed his plans early. After the attack on Naboo, the Jedi Order was erased from the universe. Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, have escaped the purge and are in hiding on Yavin IV. But it is hard to hide the presence of the Chosen One from their hunters, even on a remote moon. The Sith are creeping closer and there is no escape...will they survive? This story is base off the book The Road, by Cormac McCarthy...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Everything is from Obi-Wan's point of view except for the small bit at the end in case you were wondering...

It was a nightmare to sleep.

Sleep brought dreams when eyes closed and dreams brought their own twisted versions of hell that poisoned the mind with greedy, scratching fingers.

He couldn’t remember a time when there was light. The darkness pressed down on him with every sluggish heartbeat, as if the organ that fed life into his body was one thrum away from giving up entirely.

Not that he would’ve minded.

He would gladly sink into the dust and give himself over to the nothingness that beckoned. Except there was something his heart lived for. His heart beat for the small boy curled against his body. It beat for the beautiful blue eyes of the child that rang vibrantly in a dark and gray world. It beat for the boy’s gentle curiosity of the world around him, gray and ashen as it might seem now.

Now.

Now, dimness defined the universe. No longer did the stars wheel and pulse in the black ocean that swarmed infinitely into the reaches of outer space. No longer were the sentient beings in the galaxy bright sparks in the Force that had once threaded itself into the souls of all living, breathing life forms.

Nothing lived anymore.

The force had forsaken them.

Stomach curling, the man reached for the boy pressed close into his side. He stroked the child’s hair gently and hugged the warm body against his chest. He felt every gentle breath echo with his own heartbeat. _I will protect you,_ the man promised, pressing his face into the blond curls. _I will protect you…always._

***

Sometimes he dreamed of the man with long, silken hair.

‘Master,’ he had once called him.

Master no longer.

His dreams were cold, painful things. They blurred memories together into an endless stream of scattered thoughts and feelings and desires. Like a disturbed holo picture displaying a static figure. Unclear. Never constant. Never fulfilling.

This dream, however, was steady. The long-haired man’s back was turned to him. He reached out to finger the soft strands of hair trailing down the man’s back. They were spider’s silk on his fingers and palms. Soft and delightful.

Words pressed against his lips wanting to flood out into the still air. His mouth opened to let them stream and tumble out, but only one word escaped before his lips pressed together involuntarily.

Master.

The long-haired man turned and smiled at him.

Padawan.

***

He jolted awake with a soft cry. The man lay half twisted out of his blankets on the cold, dry earth. The chill of the ground had crept up his back and frozen his breath. He shuddered.

The boy pressed against his chest let out a quiet mumble of protest and the man stilled in his shifting. He waited silently as the child nodded off again, another unintelligible sound escaping his chapped lips. Sure now that the boy was still asleep, the man sat up gingerly and wrapped the child in his half-warm blankets. He tucked the boy into the leaves of their makeshift bed and rose, walking out into the brush where the dead trees ahead grew denser.

It was a graveyard of ashen life. A thicket of deceased soldiers scattered over a meadow of ash, frozen in varying degrees of decay. Some of the trees were broken in half and lay twisted and buried in the heavy residue of ash. The man braced himself against one of the sturdier trunks and coughed hard. The painful hacking filled his mouth with the taste of blood. He shuddered against the tree and spat on the ground. Then he fell to his knees with a quiet sob.

The dream that had colored his memories had fled, leaving behind a bitter sorrow that made the man want to throw his head back and hurl a betrayed scream into the quiet, barren air. He wanted to cut through the heavy silence with his pain and flood this dead world with his agony. Clenching his teeth bitterly, the man sank his fingers into the frozen, ashen dirt beneath his knees. Tears slipped out of his eyes down his cheeks. Broken sobs tore from his chest through his throat and accompanied the steam made from the cold morning air.

Nothing was worse than dreaming of a world that once was and will never be again.  Nothing was worse than being happy for dreaming of those ‘nevers’.

It meant you had given up.

And he couldn’t give up. Not now.

                                                                                                ***

  It was still dark when he pulled himself away from the dead earth and picked his way tenderly toward their campsite. The boy was still asleep bundled up in all the blankets they possessed. Quietly, the man moved about their campsite, adding wood from a pile he’d gathered the night before to the languid flames that kept the two warm during the night. He dug around in his pack and pulled out two wrapped rations which he opened and poured water into from his half-empty canteen. He strung the packages through a wire he’d found not long ago and hung them over the growing flames. As they warmed into something more or less edible, the man searched through his pack and counted how many ration parcels they had left.

Enough for a few more days. Long enough to arrive at the nearest settlement and scavenge for more food.

The man pulled out the rest of the items in his pack and laid them on the ground: a small vibroblade, a pair of warm gloves, a small tin of oil, a tinderbox, and a smooth, black river stone. Every item in his pack was an essential thing, vital to survival in the case of emergency. The man reached out and ran his finger over the polished surface of the stone watching as thin red lines began to stream across the face of the black stone.

A memory rose up in his mind, quiet and beckoning. It spoke of wise words, a gentle smile, a face framed by a graying beard, long, silver-brown hair falling, and-

No.

The man clamped down on his yearning thoughts and pulled his hand away from the stone with a glare. Remembering was giving up and he _couldn’t_ do that.

Instead, the man dug deeper into his pack for the item nestled at the very bottom wrapped in soft cloth. He pulled the parcel out gingerly and unwrapped the coverings to reveal a cylindrical hilt glowing against the distant, rising sun. The man stroked the alloy metal with a wistful smile and laid the lightsaber on the ground. Then he just sat watching the boy sleep.

The sun was lumbering out from behind the mountains in the far distance. It lit the base of the earthen structures with pale, cold light. The man sighed in relief. Now the day would be warm enough that he wouldn’t have to hear the boy’s teeth chatter in the cold or watch the small body shiver and quake in the chill air.

He laid his hand on the boy’s side and looked out through the trees toward the mountains, counting the child’s rising breaths. This was not a safe place. They could be seen in the copse of dead trees now that it was day.

The boy turned in the blankets. Father, he said.

I’m right here.

I know.

                                                                                                ***

An hour later they were walking on one of the dirt paths that led to the mountains. The man pulled a small pod behind him filled with their blankets, tent, and water jugs while the boy carried his own knapsack. The pod they had found in one of the settlement houses a little while ago. The man had cut holes in the pod with his vibroblade and tied part of the wire through the openings to pull it along with them. He alternated between facing the mountains and turning to watch the road behind them as he pulled. The man shifted the pack high on his shoulders and searched over the landscape of the barren, wasted moon. The almost-invisible dirt path they walked on was empty. Below them in the distant valley, a cold, gray river snaked along and disappeared into the mountain base. Along the shore were clumps of dead trees and grasses and reeds. Are you okay? He said softly. The boy nodded. Then they set out along the dusty, concealed path to the sun-tipped mountains, shuffling through the ash that blanketed the ground, each the other’s world entire.

***       

They crossed the river by an old, wooden bridge probably left over from the inhabitants of the settlement and a few clicks on they came upon an old ship hangar. They stood on the path and studied it. I think we should check it out, the man said. Take a look. They crossed the dusty, ashen road and into the weeds and grasses toward the hangar doors. The plant life was covered in the thick ash and crumbled to pieces as the man and the boy forded their way across the flat.

Their boots made sharp clacking sounds as they struck the smooth floor of the empty hangar bay. The wind rustled quietly through the darkened building, scattering old webs glued to the corners of the walls and stirring up the ash and dust that made thin sheets on the floor. There were no ships docked in the bay. Their owners had probably taken off and escaped the moon at the first signs of the Purge and the Empire’s growing rein across the galaxy.

Along the walls were shelves filled with dust and ash. The man squatted to peer inside the crannies for anything useful. There was a box of screws which he gave the boy to play with and a small toolbox empty save for a small pilex bit driver and a wrench.

Across the bay was a small control office. The windows wrapping around the room were still intact. The man tried the control panel and the door to the office slid away with a heavy groan. A rush of air escaped, accompanied by the smell of stale dust and ash. The boy stood in the door as the man perused the inside. The control desk beneath the windows was covered in dust and strangely unresponsive. The man pressed a few of the buttons listening for the drone of some door or the hangar lights to come on. Broken. The boy picked his way over and began jamming every button on the panel, making soft, imaginary noises under his breath. The man turned away to face a small desk shoved against the wall. There were old datapads scattered across its surface. A pile of blueprints beneath them. The man tucked one with a CK-4 swoop bike design in his sack for the boy to look at later.

He tucked the other blueprints against the wall and froze as something rolled out the side of one of the rolls and clattered on the floor. A comlink. The man picked up the small device and entered the encryption algorithm of his old comlink number from his time in the Order long ago. The boy watched him. What are you doing? He said.

                                                                                                ***       

On the far side of the river valley the dirt road passed through a small forest of charred trees. Ash fluttered and blew over the road, painting the dirt with gray and black streaks. A small settlement home lay abandoned in an open clearing and beyond that reach were clay lands, stark and gray and red where the clay in the ground melted into the ash covered hills. Farther along were old holo boards that had once advertised clubs and products and hotels in the settlement city. Everything below had faded into the dire landscape. No color. No life. Just gray.

At the top of the hill they stood in the cold and wind, watching their breath mingle as steam into the frosty air. He looked at the boy. I’m alright, the child said. The man put his hand on his shoulder and nodded toward the open landscape below them and the settlement beyond. He pulled a pair of macrobinoculars from a pouch inside the pod and stood in the road, scanning the plains below where the shape of the city settlement just appeared out of the grayness.

Nothing to see. No smoke. Can I see? The boy said. Yes. Of course you can. The boy was lifted onto the man’s shoulders and he adjusted the wheels on the macrobinoculars. What do you see? The man asked gently. Nothing. He lowered the binoculars. It’s raining. Yes, the man said. I know.

                                                                                                ***

They left the pod in a gully covered with a synth tarp and made their way up the slope through the dead, limbless trees to where he’d seen a rock structure caved in and covered with holes and crannies large enough to fit in. They sat huddled together under a rock overhang, wrapped in blankets over their cloaks. The boy curled against the man’s chest and drowsed as the man watched the rain stop and listened to the dripping in the woods.

                                                                                                ***

When it had cleared they went down to the pod and pulled away the tarp and got their tent and the things they would need for the night. They returned to their spot in the rock overhang and the man sat with his arms around the boy trying to warm him. The outline of the gray settlement vanished as the night drew nearer and became part of the black beyond. He lit the little lamp they’d found in one of the more underdeveloped settlements they’d found. Then they walked out to the dirt road and he took the boy’s hand and they crested the top of the hill so they could see out at the darkening landscape beyond, wrapped in their blankets, listening to the howling of the wind, watching for any sign of a fire or light . They sat on the vertex of the hill and ate their cold, meager dinner. Everything was too wet to make and keep a fire.

They returned to the rock outcropping and the boy buried himself in their blankets as the man set the lamp between them. He’d brought the boy’s ship book and the speeder bike blueprint, but the boy was too tired to read. Can we leave the lamp on until I’m asleep? The child whispered in the buttery light. Yes. Of course we can.

***

The boy was a long time going to sleep. The dreams that crept into his mind at night were barely being kept at bay. He knew the man struggled with nightmares to. The child faced him in the soft light, eyes dancing over the man’s features. Can I ask you something? He said quietly. The man opened his eyes, blue orbs gleaming yellow in the lamp’s light.

Yes. Of course.

Are we going to die?

The man’s eyes narrowed. Someday. Not now.

Oh.

Yes.

Are we still going to go through the mountains.

Yes.

To escape the empire? To find more Jedi?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay what?

Nothing…just okay.

Go to sleep, little one.

Okay.

I need to blow out the lamp. Is that okay?

Yes.

The boy rolled over quietly in the darkness and watched the darkened rock walls. A new thought began slithering into the dark place in his head where the dragon in his mind stirred and slumbered. Can I ask you something? He murmured in the darkness. There was rustling as the man turned over.

Yes.

What would you do if I died?

If you died, I would want to die to.

The boy’s eyes gleamed. So you could be with me?

Yes. So I could be with you.

Okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing around with a new writing style which is in this first chapter. If you guys liked it, please leave a kudo if you want to. If you have any suggestions or questions or you just want to share your thoughts on the chapter, please feel free to comment:):):) we authors love getting feedback from readers. You guys have no idea how much it brightens my day to get an email saying someone posted a new comment!!! :):)  
> Thanks for reading!!!  
> :)


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